CELESTINES, a religious order founded about 126o by Peter of Morrone, afterwards Pope Celestine V. (1294). It was an attempt to unite the eremitical and cenobitical modes of life. Peter's first disciples lived as hermits on Mount Majella in the Abruzzi. The Benedictine rule was taken as the basis of the life, but was supplemented by regulations notably increasing the austerities practised. The form of government was borrowed largely from those prevailing in the mendicant orders. Indeed, though the Celestines are reckoned as a branch of the Benedic tines, there is little in common between them. During the found er's lifetime the order spread rapidly, and eventually there were about 15o monasteries in Italy, and others in France, Bohemia and the Netherlands. The French houses formed a separate con gregation, the head-house being in Paris. The French Revolution and those of the 19th century destroyed their houses, and the Celestine order seems no longer to exist.
See Helyot, Histoire des ordres religieux (1792) , vi. C. 23 ; Max Heimbucher, Orden and Kongregationen (1896), i. § 22, p. 134; the art. "Colestiner" in Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2) , Herzog Hauck, Realencyklopadie (ed. 3) and Catholic Encyclopaedia, vol. xvi. pp. 19, 20.